Fresh Off the Boat Writer Camilla Blackett on Sexism in the TV Writers' Room

To mark ELLE's 30th anniversary, we assembled 35 of the world's most accomplished 30-year-old women for an epic bicoastal production. You can see the full gallery here. Below is a longer version of the interview we conducted with TV writer Camilla Blackett for the magazine.

This. Is. 30. Show us your 30 on Instagram by hashtagging a picture #ThisIs30.

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I was looking at your Twitter feed last night, and you're very funny. I love the thing that you wrote: "If you think women are against each other, you've never seen us drunk as f--k in the ladies room with a total stranger who's just been dumped." Did that come from an experience you had?

I was in Italy seeing my stepmom—my stepfamily live in Verona—and me and my stepmom had been out. She's very young and very fun; she's a designer. We were at this bar, and in the bathroom there were these three Italian girls, and not speaking very much Italian, I knew exactly what was going on. One girl was crying and the other two were like, 'Bastard! Bastard!' This is the universal language of women in the bathroom looking after each other.

Totally. It really pokes a hole in the idea that women are competing all the time or can't support each other. Do you feel that whole female competition thing is overrated or overblown?

It's absolute rubbish! In the workplace, the only issues I've had with competitiveness has been from males, and it's males who don't like younger women, and often have issues with women who are senior to them. That's the most mind-boggling thing: having this level of entitlement where they feel they can express that. Like, this is your boss! Whether she has a vagina has nothing to do with it.

I've had nothing but really supportive women around me, work-wise. … Working with women, you just get so much shit done. There's a lack of ego and posturing. All the filibustering you get from other writers in the writers' room, it's always men.

So in the Fresh Off the Boat room, is it different? Maybe you say something and instead of it getting shot down, it gets carried up and like, 'Let's refine that idea'?

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Absolutely. It is a much more supportive room. I've been in situations with male writers where a female writer has said something, then a male writer talked over her, then repeated what she just said as if it was his own idea, and everyone in the room is just sitting there. You think you're going crazy because you don't think in any civilized society that this kind of blatant misogyny can actually operate, but oh no, this is just the world.

You've worked on some very cutting-edge shows, like Skins, where they're showing teenagers and how they really act. And then Fresh Off the Boat offers a really diverse, fresh view of America. Do you seek out those kind of projects, or do they find you?

I think it's both. As a writer, you just respond to things that interest you, and Skins interested me because it was the first time that a show about teenagers wasn't going to be written by guys who hadn't been teenagers in a long time, or that wasn't about morality and posturing or anything. And with Fresh Off the Boat, it's seen as being cutting-edge but it's not. It's just a family show. The fact that it was the first show featuring an Asian family on network TV in 20 years, it's crazy. … Between us and Blackish, it's been like an incredible year. Here are some of the voices that exist in America.

Does it seem like a new era for you?

It feels like it. Not just with racial diversity, but also with the scrutiny on sexism in Hollywood, especially on the writer and director.

On the other hand, you have also have idiots like the guy who wrote that Deadline article arguing we've had too much. I get it, they have to get their page clicks and that kind of stuff, but for every step forward there's going to be some kind of prehistoric, 'Come back into the caves!' I've been lucky with the shows I've gotten to do. Very, very lucky. If something comes along that doesn't interest you, you go, 'Can I get myself out of bed every morning to write this?' And if the answer's no, then you just don't.'

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Yeah, that's a good litmus test. So what does it mean to you to be 30?

It's been a relief, actually, like an enormous, enormous relief. It was this thing that was looming, and then I got there and thought, 'Oh this is lovely.' I felt a little bit more complete, and I was like, 'Oh, this is who I am.' There probably isn't going to be much more movement in my personality, and this is my identity and I like it. You feel confident saying no to things, which I think as a woman is really important. It's a gendered idea to people-please and make people feel comfortable, but there's this power in saying, 'No, I don't want to do that,' and it not being a big deal.

Do you feel like when you were 25 you hadn't quite mastered that yet?

Oh God, no. I was still trying to please employees and boyfriends and my family, and, like, how do I make everyone proud of me? How do I make boys like me? And now I'm like, 'Eh, this is pretty much it.' It's not changing that much.

And so now are you thinking, How do I make myself happy?

Absolutely. Self-care has become so much more important. Instead of trying to meet every obligation that's thrown at me, it's going, What things are important to me, what things are going to make me feel good, which things are going to make the people I really care about feel good? How do I enrich the life that's around me, whether that's creatively or intellectually? And it's very small things. This year I made the commitment that I was going to cut cable in my house, and I wanted to read more.

That seems like a huge step for a TV writer to take, cutting the cord. It's very empowering, I imagine.

It's really good, but the fact is, television consumption isn't the same as it was before, in that you can pick and choose what you want to watch in this a la carte way. I'm not missing anything that I should be watching. What I'm not doing is filling hours with mindless stuff. I'm actually having to make a decision. So it's like, I want to watch True Detective, so I watch True Detective, not three hours of Property Brothers. Although sometimes that happens. If I'm hungover, then Property Brothers is happening.

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When you were 13 what did you dream of doing or being at this time of your life?

I think I was kind of miserable when I was 13. I'd just discovered grunge. That was awesome. I think I just wanted to be out in the world; I think really wanted to travel. Everyone had been telling me that I was going to be a lawyer, so I just accepted that that was what I was going to be.

Who told you that you were going to be a lawyer?

My grandparents. My family were like, 'You seem really belligerent and question authority a lot, so lawyer seems like a good job for you.' I wanted experience. I knew I wanted to see a lot of the world. I wanted to strive for a lot. I knew that having a job that confined me to an office was never going to be something that satisfied me, and that didn't seem very scary. I was just like, That's fine. I'll just find something that allows me to be in an office at the time. I think in some capacity being 30, you think of the glamorousness of California and Hollywood, but that always seemed like a space for actors, rather than a space for writers. I think I just wanted to be out in the world.

How do those ideas compare to where you're at now?

Sometimes I have to go to an office and that's okay, but the rest of the time I get to travel, I get to work with really interesting people, I get to make stuff, and be filming stuff, and be working with actors, and traveling. Every single year feels completely different than the previous one, and I can't measure how great that feels. ... I mean, some people find [routine] very comforting, and that's what people want, but for me, to know exactly what I'm doing next year and what the next five years of my life will bring? Nothing would destroy my soul more.

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So you like that unpredictable quality?

Yeah, I've lived in a few different cities, and I'm very lucky. Picking up and moving for the right opportunity has never seemed too scary. It's always a little bit scary because you're going to a new place, and, you know, I don't know many people. But it's always excited me more than filled me with dread. It's also the prospect of the different things you'll get to work on. I never thought I'd do comedy. I'd always done very serious drama, and then New Girl came along and then Fresh Off the Boat, and I was like, Oh, this is really fun.

It keeps you guessing that way.

Absolutely. ... You can get very used to writing one sort of thing and doing one sort of thing. Having something thrown at you which is really challenging, like a musical. I don't know how to write a song, but okay, you can start with writing lyrics. It's exercising those little muscles. I don't really do Pilates, but they're always like, 'Oh, there are these tiny little muscles that you didn't even know you have.' It's like exercising those in your mind and that's really great, and I think it makes you creatively better to push yourself into new areas.

So when did you realize you wanted to be a TV writer specifically?

I think the year I started on Skins. Before, I'd wanted to be a director, and I don't think I really knew what that meant. What I really wanted to be was a writer-director, because all the directors that I really loved were writing their own material, and then I realized that, oh no, the power comes first in the script, before you start the camera. Literature was always my first love, so I kind of found this unique space where I could marry the two things. It was that year that I decided I wanted to be a writer, a TV writer, and then I was very lucky I got offered Skins. It was my second year of my A-levels, so I was 18. And I was like, Oh, okay, this is really easy. It's not that easy. I was incredibly lucky. They'd hired young writers for the show; they wanted young writers.

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To give that point of view.

Yeah, totally. It's hard to write a show about teenagers when you're not a teenager, because it's hard to be that honest with yourself about the way you were when you were a teenager. Like awful, reckless, dangerous as well, and some of the situations that you place yourself in as a teenager are horrifying to look back on, but some of them aren't as dramatic as you think they are. In every single episode of any show you see, when a character does Ecstasy, there's some [moral]: 'Don't do Ecstasy!' And with Skins it's like, 'No, we do Ecstasy every weekend and it's fine.' It's okay, you just feel really bummed out on Monday, maybe you accidentally made out with your friend's boyfriend, but life goes on.

Oh, those years.

My London friends are still doing those years. I just went home last month and they're like, 'Yeah, we're just doing Ketamine all weekend,' and I'm like, 'Guys! Some of us have mortgages. What are we doing?'

I do feel in the major cities that adolescence can extend to 34 or 35.

Absolutely. My London mates and my New York mates are still raging so hard. I'm like, 'Godspeed, I'm going to bed at midnight because I have yoga in the morning.'

What is the secret to your success? Your magic formula?

Not believing for a single second that I'm not allowed to do anything.

Even when it seems risky or scary.

You can still do it. You may not be amazing at it, but you're allowed to do it. You don't have to get permission to try something and to be in a space or in a room or in a meeting. You're allowed.

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What do you hope to have accomplished 30 years from now?

I hope to have set a good example for my youngest sister, who's five, and just for other young creative women of any descent, of any color really. It's just that you're allowed to do whatever you want, you're allowed to compete in a space. It may be a little bit harder to get into, but it's worth it. I'd like to have a body of work that I can be really proud of, as well, that people will still return to watch and enjoy and talk about and have really fond memories of. And whether that's in the film space or the TV space, just having something that people really enjoy and love.

And not necessarily something enormously grandiose, like not making a film that changes the world. My favorite movie was Labyrinth. Again, making stuff that makes people go, 'Oh, that movie, I really liked that.'

Do you think 30-year-olds are different today than in 1985?

Hell yeah! I think we're much luckier. I think it's a little bit harder to get to grips with the new dynamic because it is so new, and that we expect a lot of things that our parents had that we don't have, like having financial security, having children already, and that sort of thing. But we have all these possibilities and these options, and that's so precious.

When you say possibilities and options, do you mean in the career vein?

Career and romantically. That you can define your relationship in very different terms. You don't have to be married to your partner to be on a marriage and baby track at this age. You can have a relationship that crosses an ocean. And career-wise, there are more of us at higher levels and doing more diverse things than there were when our moms were our age. Obviously, a lot of other women have done the hard work for us, so that's more normalized for us. I think there is some kissing good-bye of some ideas, like women my age not having a child yet. But at the same time, that's a choice; if you really wanted a child, you could do that now.

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